When AI is the opposite of sinister: An MIT researcher is held up as model of how algorithms can benefit humanity
In June, when MIT artificial intelligence researcher Regina Barzilay went to Massachusetts General Hospital for a mammogram, her data were run through a deep learning model designed to assess her risk of developing breast cancer, which she had been diagnosed with once before.
The workings of the algorithm, which predicted that her risk was low, were familiar: Barzilay helped build that very model, after being spurred by her 2014 cancer diagnosis to pivot her research to health care.
